Here’s what you’re looking for: Frank Stitely

FEATURED

Business Owners Face One of Three Exits

Businessman putting a card with text "Don't resist change, embrace it" in suit pocketExpect to sell your practice? Not if you resist change.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

In talking to firms from around the country, I realized there are three types of firms out there:

  1. Firms and practitioners that are sliding into retirement, whether they know it or not
  2. Firms that see the need for change, but don’t know where to start
  3. Firms that see a clear path to the future through better practice management

MORE: Don’t Let Clients Dictate Tax Workflow | Make Fewer Mistakes, Increase Revenue and Capacity | How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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Since publishing my first book and launching my firm’s workflow and collaboration application, I have talked to practitioners from firms of all types and sizes. My CPA firm pursued a few acquisition opportunities. During the process, I learned there are a lot of practitioners who are either incapable of adapting to our profession’s 21st-century changes or unwilling to adapt. That’s okay, if you are making an informed choice to retire and don’t care about realizing much in value by selling your firm.

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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Don’t Let Clients Dictate Tax Workflow

https://cpatrendlines.com/2014/02/02/marcus-metrics/Ask the right questions and stick to your processes.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

Who makes the errors in your firm? Staff obviously, but that’s half of the answer. Clients are a major source of tax return errors. Clients cause errors in three ways:

  1. Errors of omission
  2. Errors of commission
  3. Errors in attitude

MORE: Make Fewer Mistakes, Increase Revenue and Capacity | How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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Every tax season, we finalize and deliver returns only to hear from the client, “I think I might have forgotten to tell you that we had a baby last year.” Does this happen to you? This is a client error of omission. Unintentionally, clients withhold important information.
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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Make Fewer Mistakes, Increase Revenue and Capacity

Businessman horrified by what he sees on computer screenTackle the four error categories.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

Determining the workflow harm that errors cause should be second nature now. Errors cause rework. Rework adds to work in progress (WIP) and, thus, increases turnaround time.

This happens in two ways: As WIP increases, capacity decreases. It’s a double whammy.

MORE: How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars | Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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When a reviewer spots errors on a tax return and sends it back to the preparer, the preparer wastes at least 15 minutes, and probably more like 30 minutes, fixing the errors. The return then goes back to the reviewer, who spends another 15 minutes re-reviewing the return. We have added 30 to 45 minutes to the WIP for this tax return. We know that adding to our WIP numerator increases turnaround time.

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LEADERSHIP

How Small Firms Can Win the Talent Wars

Three young people working in an officeGetting creative can bring in better talent and better clients.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

One afternoon, the partner group of our outsourced accounting practice met for a state of the practice meeting conducted by our director of outsourced accounting. Our prior director left and we were looking for someone when one of our newbies asked if he could be considered.

MORE: Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns | Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time? | Why Hiring Out of School Works | Leadership Growth is a Two-Way Street | Quiet Quitting: Are Employers Culturally Aware? | How to Guide Students into Accounting | Three Strategies to Keep Emerging Leaders Engaged
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The 25-year-old had one year of experience, and we were chasing a controller-type person. The whole outsourced practice was in shambles. Revenue was nil and any clients we had were unsatisfied.
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MANAGEMENT

Easy Ways to Avoid ‘Done But’ Tax Returns

meeting of six peopleChange mentality and ask better questions to eliminate bottlenecking.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

A project hung up in process is one where there is a disagreement between people involved in a project as to the status. For example, a client thinks he has answered your tax return questions, while you believe he has not. Another example is when a tax return preparer believes a return is ready for review while the reviewer does not believe it’s ready.

MORE: Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm | Do You Know Your Turnaround Time? | Tax Season Client Meetings: Kill Them Now | Leadership Growth is a Two-Way Street | 12 Subjective Factors for Pricing Your Next Engagement | The Six Pillars for Finance Transformation | Three Strategies to Keep Emerging Leaders Engaged
GoProCPA.comExclusively for PRO Members. Log in here or upgrade to PRO today.

The result of a hung-up project is a dead project – one that’s not moving to completion.
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CLIENT SERVICE OPPORTUNITIES

Six Ways to Create a Millennial-Friendly Firm

Your firm’s future depends on successfully engaging younger clients and younger staff. Here’s how.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

Do you know why millennials can’t buy houses? Avocado toast is expensive. How many millennials does it take to change a light bulb? None. They accept it for what it is. Buy me a craft beer and I’ll tell you a half-dozen more.

MORE: Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?
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Now, here’s why you need millennials as clients and how they increase the efficiency of your firm.

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FEATURED

Do You Know Your Turnaround Time?

Cutting it is the shortest route to happier clients.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

Todd Rundgren sang, “I don’t want to work. I just wanna bang on the drum all day.”

I agree with half of that. I don’t want to work. However, I want someone else to bang on the drum all day for me. I’m not that ambitious.

The key to achieving Hall of Fame-level laziness is delegation.

MORE: Tax Season Client Meetings: Kill Them Now | Leadership Growth is a Two-Way Street | 12 Subjective Factors for Pricing Your Next Engagement | The Six Pillars for Finance Transformation | Three Strategies to Keep Emerging Leaders Engaged
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If I have no ambition to do anything, but want things to get done, someone else must do them. Similarly, effective practice management is putting the right people in the right places accomplishing the right tasks at the right times. That’s a pretty damn good definition of effective laziness as well. There’s a subtle genius in that.

For example, our firm was looking at acquiring a really nice firm, where the two partners were working 100-hour weeks during tax season. As a result of the acquisition, they wanted to work fewer hours. They were preparing the vast majority of tax returns themselves, so we suggested having them act as reviewers instead. That would also transfer knowledge of the clients from them to us – a central objective of any successful acquisition.
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BUSY SEASON MANAGEMENT

Tax Season Client Meetings: Kill Them Now

Man working hard at office deskLet’s try to spike phone calls and emails while we’re at it.

By Frank Stitely
The Relentless CPA

What did Dorothy and her friends fear in the Wizard of Oz? “Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!” Dorothy feared the wrong things if she’s a partner in a CPA firm. We don’t see much wildlife in our offices during tax season unless you count fast food delivery people and the occasional crazy client.

MORE: Make Your Firm Faster, Smarter, Richer … with Millennials | Seven Ways to Beat Staffing Shortages | The Happier, Saner, Richer Tax Firm | Avoiding Projects Hung Up in Process | Teaching the Meaning of ‘Done’
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We should really fear the events that destroy our priorities and drain hours from productive work. Meetings and phone calls and emails, oh my! Let’s look at why these communication methods are so destructive from a practice management standpoint.
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